Institutions

Library leaders should be drawn from across the organization. Any idea that technology leaders are overly specialised or too distant from general library work is outmoded and counter-productive.

The Calgary central library was on first impression the finest public building I have been in for years.

We are now used to memory institutions as a way of collectively referring to libraries, archives and museums. We also recognize that memory is not univocal or may be contested.

Libraries are not ends in themselves, but serve the interests of the organizations of which they are a part. As university emphasis varies around research, education and career poles, we can expect to see libraries evolve to support those emphases more strongly.

A framework of engagement, innovation and rightscaling is used to talk about some of the ways in which the library is changing. This is based on a model developed by John Hagel and John Seely Brown.

Library definitions often emphasize access to or management of information. However, the library has a much stronger generative role in the cycle of knowledge creation.

Business school writing I quite like using the word ‘assets’ with reference to library collections. We tend to think of